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Another consideration is that if The Good [and First] is
simplex and without need, it can neither need the intellective
act nor possess what it does not need: it will therefore not have
intellection. (Interpolation or corruption: It is without
intellection because, also, it contains no duality.)
Again; an Intellectual-Principle is distinct from The Good and
takes a certain goodness only by its intellection of The Good.
Yet again: In any dual object there is the unity [the principle
of identity] side by side with the rest of the thing; an
associated member cannot be the unity of the two and there must
be a self-standing unity [within the duality] before this unity
of members can exist: by the same reasoning there must be also
the supreme unity entering into no association whatever,
something which is unity-simplex by its very being, utterly
devoid of all that belongs to the thing capable of association.
How could anything be present in anything else unless in virtue
of a source existing independently of association? The simplex
[or absolute] requires no derivation; but any manifold, or any
dual, must be dependent.
We may use the figure of, first, light; then, following it, the
sun; as a third, the orb of the moon taking its light from the
sun: Soul carries the Intellectual-Principle as something
imparted and lending the light which makes it essentially
intellective; Intellectual-Principle carries the light as its own
though it is not purely the light but is the being into whose
very essence the light has been received; highest is That which,
giving forth the light to its sequent, is no other than the pure
light itself by whose power the Intellectual-Principle takes
character.
How can this highest have need of any other? It is not to be
identified with any of the things that enter into association;
the self-standing is of a very different order.
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